here, but to a periwigg-maker's of
his acquaintance, and there bought two periwiggs, mighty fine; indeed,
too fine, I thought, for me; but he persuaded me, and I did buy them for
L4 10s. the two. Then to the Exchange and bought gloves, and so to the
Bull-Head Taverne, whither he brought my French gun; and one Truelocke,
the famous gunsmith, that is a mighty ingenious man, and he did take my
gun in pieces, and made me understand the secrets thereof and upon the
whole I do find it a very good piece of work, and truly wrought; but
for certain not a thing to be used much with safety: and he do find that
this very gun was never yet shot off: I was mighty satisfied with it and
him, and the sight of so much curiosity of this kind. Here he brought
also a haberdasher at my desire, and I bought a hat of him, and so away
and called away my wife from his house, and so home and to read, and
then to supper and to bed, my head full in behalf of Balty, who tells me
strange stories of his mother. Among others, how she, in his absence in
Ireland, did pawne all the things that he had got in his service under
Oliver, and run of her own accord, without her husband's leave, into
Flanders, and that his purse, and 4s. a week which his father receives
of the French church, is all the subsistence his father and mother have,
and that about L20 a year maintains them; which, if it please God, I
will find one way or other to provide for them, to remove that scandal
away.

30th. Up, and the French periwigg maker of whom I bought two yesterday
comes with them, and I am very well pleased with them. So to the office,
where all the morning. At noon home to dinner, and thence with my
wife's knowledge and leave did by coach go see the silly play of my Lady
Newcastle's, called "The Humourous Lovers;" the most silly thing that
ever come upon a stage. I was sick to see it, but yet would not but have
seen it, that I might the better understand her. Here I spied Knipp and
Betty, of the King's house, and sent Knipp oranges, but, having little
money about me, did not offer to carry them abroad, which otherwise I
had, I fear, been tempted to. So with [Sir] W. Pen home (he being at the
play also), a most summer evening, and to my office, where, among other
things, a most extraordinary letter to the Duke of York touching the
want of money and the sad state of the King's service thereby, and so to
supper and to bed.

31st (Lord's day). Up, and my tailor's boy brings